Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Cliff Roberts: "Das Buch vom Jazz"

Here's another neat find from my favourite used book store: The Book of Jazz, illustrated by Cliff Roberts. Of course I had to find the German language version - go figure! - but what the heck, Roberts' pictures are a delight, no matter what language they're in.

If you've been reading this blog for a couple of years now, you might recall that Cliff Roberts was a good friend of our own Harry Borgman. The two illustrators started their careers together in Detroit at the Allied Artists studio back in the late 1940's.

With Harry's generous assistance, I wrote a post about Cliff Roberts that included many examples from his early days. You can read that post here.

Roberts said his early influences were Jan Balet, Jerome Snyder and Joe Kaufman, but the drawing he did in 1955 for The Book of Jazz are pure Jim Flora (and even some of his earliest work has a distinct Flora-esque look about it). I have to wonder if the publisher of The Book of Jazz tried and failed to get Flora in the first place and asked Roberts to imitate the other illustrator's style.

No matter - whether imitation or homage, Roberts' illustrations for The Book of Jazz are wonderful - so I'm going to shut up now and just let you soak 'em in. Enjoy!

Below, a picture of Cliff Roberts from the early 70's which appeared in Cartoonist PROfiles magazine. Thanks to Amid Amidi for sharing this with me.

Cliff Roberts later went into the animation business and worked on Saturday Morning Cartoons like The Smurfs, Scooby Doo and The Pink Panther. He passed away in 1999.

23 comments:

I've been receiving (and reading) the T.I. posts for over a year now, and this is the first time I've felt compelled to comment -- these illustrations are pure delight! Now I'll have to hunt down a Cliff Roberts book...

Okay, this sounds weird enough to be truly interesting: a 10-minute animated film that Cliff Roberts designed in 1959, one of those drivers-education films for teenage students? Kinda sounds like it could be the same Cliff Roberts. It's for sale on a DVD collection; here's the synopsis (link to sale at bottom):

As I replied to Zach, I was unaware the book had been reprinted. I'm probably going to take down most of these images in a day or two since the book's widely available. As for using copyrighted material, I refer you to this discussion on Flickr from a couple of years ago regarding "Fair Use":

Well, now I don't know what to think... I've searched amazon, alibris, Lacey's "books a million"... nobody seems to have any copies of this book available for sale. Can anyone shed some light on this? If this artwork is nearly impossible to come by, then I hesitate to not show it here, because its an important aspect of Cliff Roberts' development as an illustrator.

Should I leave these up or take most of them down? Speak up, TI readers.

LEIF.... When I saw this, TI already had 11 comments! I'm soaking it in...and enjoying. The only design I quibble with...'Swing'. That was my era...much more active than that. You've been posting all these great decorative designer dudes....simply mahvelous. Makes plain vanilla illustrators (moi) soooo pedantic. It must be that engineering gene.

I think I agree with that rationale, Zach. I'm going to cut the total in half, I think. Based on the discussion here and on Flickr, showing these images has only encouraged more people to seek out their own copy to purchase.

Cliff Roberts did do some other books. I have a copy of the childrens' books "The Dot" and "The Hole" by him. Here is a link to illustrations from his book "Thomas":http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonwonder/342943934/in/set-72157600039657396/